Good morning. So this weekend we are completing the spring practice period in which we've been talking about the Bodhisattva practices and major Bodhisattva figures. And I'm talking this weekend, as I started yesterday, about the topography of Bodhisattva practices and approaches. and how these bodhisattva figures are kind of nicknames for aspects of bodhisattva practice, how they represent the dynamics of the, well, in terms of the chant we're gonna be doing for midday service, the harmony of difference and sameness, the interactive integration and dynamic integration of universal and particular,

[01:01]

the universal ultimate reality, which in some ways could be associated with the teaching of sameness or oneness or emptiness, the wisdom teachings expressed, for example, in the Manjushri teachings. and how that interacts with the phenomenal world, the particulars of our life, how we express our communion with ultimate reality in the particular aspects of our situations, our individual situations. And this is expressed in terms of compassion, how we respond and take care of the particular beings in the world and the particular aspects of our own being in the world and the particular unfoldings that arise in our own awareness.

[02:31]

So again, these bodhisattva figures we've been talking about are kind of ways of talking about aspects of bodhisattva practice. Yesterday I talked about this in terms of sazen, aspects of meditation that are represented by each of these bodhisattvic realms. So each of these bodhisattva constructs have sometimes numbers of particular meditative, we could say techniques or methods, but in terms of zazen, These are all things that come out of Zazen. And actually, all of this comes out of Zazen.

[03:38]

So historically, these Bodhisattva figures and their teachings and the schools and sutras they are expressed in, all unfolded from people doing Zazen, going back to Shakyamuni Buddha. All of this Mahayana literature all of the teachings of the Dharma are simply images and unfoldings of sasan awareness that people have appreciated and expressed and have been carried down to us and are alive in our zazen and in the way in which the dharma is being recreated in our time and place.

[04:47]

So there's this dynamic expression in the interplay of these bodhisattvic realms. These bodhisattvas are not distinct, separate, sharp boxes, but clouds of bodhisattvic awareness. Nicknames for aspects and approaches of bodhisattvic kindness and insight. So I want to talk today about this in terms of the wisdom side. The aspect of ultimate or the universal sameness, oneness. And of course, each of these bodhisattvic expressions have both some aspect of oneness or emptiness or sameness or however you want to say it, the ultimate, and some aspect of compassion or recognizing differences.

[06:11]

But we could say that some of them particularly emphasize wisdom, some of them particularly emphasize compassion. So I'll talk more about the compassion side tomorrow. But today, I want to talk about how these bodhisattvic fields represent wisdom. So, Manjushri is considered the bodhisattva of wisdom. So what is this wisdom that is the province of the bodhisattvic approach we call Manjushri. Well, we could call it wisdom or we could call it insight. It's intuitive.

[07:15]

It's not the same as knowledge or learning, although it may include that. That's, you know, maybe relevant. the universal as something that is present already, that we intuit, that is, that we, when we stop and slow down and, you know, from our perspective, stop and sit still and face the wall, it's there. How do we look into it? How do we see what's, as Suzuki Roshi said, the most important thing? So the bodhisattva dream known as Manjushri sees immediately what's important. Not as a product of reading lots of sutras, but in the sutras he appears and sees immediately this insight.

[08:24]

Or, and of course, you know, we can look at the figure of Manjushri fearlessly riding a lion, sometimes holding a sword to cut through delusion, sometimes holding up a teaching scepter because he teaches. He uses language to see through the duality, so this wisdom side has to do with non-duality, through seeing through our usual way of dividing everything up into self and other, into subject and object. That's just the limited way that human consciousness works. what we think of as consciousness is about discriminative consciousness.

[09:28]

In Sanskrit and in Chinese, there's a particular word or character for discriminating consciousness, what we think of as consciousness. But wisdom is about cutting through that sense of separation, seeing into the emptiness of all these distinctions, seeing into oneness, seeing into sameness. We are all essentially one. Or in terms of emptiness teaching, we're empty of all these distinctions and separations, subject and object. Everything is a verb. Everything is alive. Essentially everything is, as Dogen said when he came back from China, of his wisdom about and seeing into the nature of Buddha nature.

[10:39]

Eyes horizontal, nose vertical. We're so deeply empty of these distinctions. This is the wisdom side that the field of Manjushri represents. And this teaching that You know, we talk in the Heart Sutra about form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form is no other than emptiness, emptiness is no other than form. Emptiness is not a thing. It's very easy to be caught by this teaching of oneness and think that's all of it. But even that is not a thing, so to not

[11:42]

to see through any thingness that we construct. And Manjushri uses language to cut through that. So this is Bodhisattva wisdom, or one aspect of that. We can also see Bodhisattva wisdom in the aspect and the approach of Bodhisattva's nickname, Vimalakirti. And this is the wisdom, the aspect of wisdom sometimes called the inconceivable. So in the sutra about the great supremely enlightened layman, Vimalakirti, who doesn't get caught up in monastic forms and levels of ordination and any of that stuff.

[12:47]

He's just out there in the world, everywhere in the world, in all worldly realms, and the most awakened person, the most woke person in every situation in the world. But he also displays the aspect of the inconceivable or the ungraspable in every realm. Things are not what we think they are. So he deconstructs our usual sense and idea of space and dimension. So in the sutra, he's kind of a trickster. So wisdom is inside of oneness. This side of wisdom is about tricking, about playing with our usual ideas about reality.

[13:51]

We can't get a hold of it. So Vimalakirti does things like taking a hold of a whole galaxy in his hand and tossing it around the room so that it lands back in his hand. I mean, what the heck does that mean? So our usual idea of size, you know, Like, this is a small room, you know. It's tiny, Zendo, compared to Green Gulch or Tassajara, right? But Vimalakirti's room is less than a quarter the size of this room, and he fits all of these great bodhisattvas and disciples into it. Our usual sense of size and space is, you know, very limited. So again, I invoke my favorite Buddhist movie, Men in Black, where at the end it has this wonderful display of the illusion of our illusory sense of space.

[15:03]

The Malakirti plays tricks with our usual sense of space. This room is huge. And maybe I could hold the Tassajara Zendo in my hand. Including Hakusho, the future Chanto. We think of size in funny ways. We think what's important has to be big. So I'll come to Samantabhadra, who expresses this in other ways. But the Malakirti plays with our usual sense of how things are and what is reality. And part of this is, again, that we can't get a hold of our usual sense of thing and part sense of things.

[16:12]

And so reality is inconceivable. We can't conceptualize all that is actually going on. In this room, for example, all of the people sitting in this room right now and all of the awarenesses that are part of what's going on in their bodies and minds right now, all of you, all of us, And then all the people who were here yesterday and tomorrow and last week and next year, you know, how are they part of what's going on in this room right now? We can't put it in a box. We can't define it. This is the inconceivable and the ungraspable. And part of the wisdom that Vimalakirti teaches is Tolerance of that.

[17:13]

How can we tolerate that we can't define and control and box up even little pieces of reality? So one description of wisdom is, again, one of my favorite Sanskrit terms, anapadika dharmakshanti, the patience and tolerance of the ungraspability or unknowability of things, of anything. So Vimalakirti teaches this inconceivability. This is another aspect of wisdom. And somebody recently wrote an email to me, a physics professor or student or whatever, saying that what I was saying about physics was inaccurate.

[18:31]

So I shouldn't say anything about physics, but I think that some of what string theory is saying is about how there are different dimensions going on that are very small. Or that are, maybe they're very big, I don't know, anyway. I should stop talking about physics. I'm told. Anyway, reality is beyond what we think it is. So Vimalakirti is about that. And Vimalakirti is also about the wisdom of non-duality. So we usually, again, talking about discriminating consciousness and how Manjushri talks about that, that we can't break everything up into two. So Manjushri talks about oneness. And Vimalakirti expresses this just through silence. So, you know, we sit quietly.

[19:35]

So this is another aspect of wisdom. And I want to mention yet a third bodhisattva nickname for another aspect of bodhisattvic practice and approach, which is Samantabhadra, who I will also mention tomorrow in terms of compassion. So again, these bodhisattvas are not cut and dry boxes. But Samantabhadra, in addition to an aspect of compassion is, expresses an aspect of wisdom. And this is through, related to the Malakirti in a way, but particularly the teaching of interconnectedness, which is in some ways an implication maybe of emptiness, but Samantabhadra

[20:37]

In the Flower Ornament Sutra, Samantabhadra is the one who rides an elephant rather than a lion. And that sutra, the Flower Ornament Avatamsaka Sutra, has many bodhisattvas in it, but he's the most prominent, maybe. And that sutra talks about interconnectedness, which is another aspect of what we would call wisdom or sameness, that we're all deeply interconnected, that we're each, as a particular, interconnected with many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, [...] many beings. All of the many people and non-human people who are part of what is happening on your seat right now, who have influenced what it is that's on your seat right now.

[21:48]

And even the people who you don't know who are part of what's happening on each of our seats and how we are interconnected. through all kinds of, I don't know, different connections that we all have. How many people here have ever been to Hawaii? What? Have been. Yeah, three people, I think. Four. Okay, I've never been there. Oh, no, actually, I stopped off in the airport once on the way to Japan. But I've never seen lava flowing, but anyway. Just for example, you know, or I could have said Tennessee. How many people have been to Tennessee? Oh, quite a few.

[22:52]

How many people have been to Oklahoma? Okay, so I've never been there, but I'm planning a trip there next year, so. So those are silly. Those are arbitrary names, borders. But there are ways in which we're connected. So I could get more specific. And where have you been in Oklahoma? How many people have been to Tulsa? Nobody? OK. Planning a trip to Tulsa. So there are lots of ways in which we're connected and not connected. We're all connected in that we've never been to Tulsa. And in the school of Chinese Buddhism that's based on this flower in the Sutra of the Huayen School, they talk about, again, as an aspect of bodhisattva wisdom, and as a kind of aspect of the harmony of difference and sameness, and the integration of difference and sameness, and wisdom and compassion maybe, oneness and manyness, the mutual non-obstruction of the universal and particular.

[24:22]

as a kind of wisdom, and the mutual non-obstruction of particulars with particulars, and how all of this coexists. And there's this holographic aspect of this, that each part of You know, the way holograms work, that each piece of the image somehow contains all of it. Fractals are like that too. I don't understand that. I mean, it's hard to get your head around it. Maybe some of you understand. But anyway, these are images of interconnectedness. And Samantabhadra is somehow a nickname for that realm of wisdom. So part of what these bodhisattvic fields of approaches and practices is a way of talking about this.

[25:30]

And so how do we practice that? What is that about in terms of our engagement with that? So I was talking yesterday about zazen particularly, but how do we practice that in the world? Well, you know, or on our cushions, but more in terms of how we understand ourselves and each other and how we express that. How do we recognize oneness and interconnectedness and non-separation, not seeing divisions, not building walls between whoever we think we are and some other, not trying to keep out I don't know, people of color or Mexicans or Muslims or non-Buddhists. You don't have to be a Buddhist to practice here, by the way.

[26:32]

It's all right. You don't have to be Zen to practice here. How do we see through all of our ideas of separation? How do we see connectedness? How do we see that we are all part of one thing? That's not just one thing. It's beyond, it's inconceivable. To call it one is already, to call it empty is already a kind of murder. It's alive. So again, these bodhisattva figures we're studying are not separate boxes of bodhisattva knowledge. They're fields of awareness and approaches to awakening practice and kindness.

[27:39]

There are particular fields of insight and wisdom that some of them encourage for us. So, I'll talk about the compassion side tomorrow, but they're not really separate either. These are just ways of talking. So, maybe that's enough for me to say today. Comments, questions, responses, anyone, please feel free. Yes, Tom. There's something that you hinted at that I'm curious about. Good, good, good. So you were talking about differences Uh-huh.

[28:54]

Okay, well I'm not sure if this addresses your question, but there's also actually in the, so to get into technical Buddhist doctrinal stuff, all of which comes out of Zazen, as I was saying, there's the teaching that comes out of the emptiness teachings of the Madhyamaka school of the two truths. And that's very important to this. And I think that's kind of what you were getting at. So there's the ultimate truth, and there's the conventional truth. And so this is very helpful, actually, that they're both true. There's the ultimate truth, which is the reality of ultimate universal emptiness or suchness. There's lots of ways of talking about it, none of which actually get to it, because it's beyond any way we talk about it.

[30:29]

But we can say that there's the ultimate reality, truth. the conventional truth, which is that we'll leave here tonight, we'll leave whenever we finish here this weekend and go back out to Irving Park Road in Chicago and this strange world we live in and function there. And so there's Tulsa, and Chicago, and Indiana, and so forth. And that's true also on a conventional level. And what we emphasize in, I would say, in Mahayana Buddhism, but particularly in Soto Zen, this idea of integration. We could say integration of wisdom and compassion. I mean, we could talk about it in lots of ways that don't never quite

[31:32]

get there, but that we come to do zazen and deepen our experience of this ultimate sense, however you want to talk about that, emptiness, suchness, whatever, sameness, oneness, wholeness. I like talking about it that way. And then how do we express that? So we have all these practices like bowing and eating in the Zendo where we work with the servers to receive food and eat mindfully and quietly. How do we take care of ordinary everyday stuff? That's the side of conventional reality, and that's true. There's a conventional truth. So there are religious, spiritual, whatever, traditions that are primarily about realizing Godhead or something, realizing the ultimate.

[32:34]

But we're here trying to do that, but also then how do we bring it into expressing kindness in the difficulties of this world. Does that get to what you're asking about? Yeah. So it's so good, yeah. Conventional truth is part of the dynamic of this. And that's more what I'll talk about tomorrow in terms of leaning over compassionately into that side. Thank you. Other comments or responses? Yes, Ishan. So thinking about the question of how big is this zendo and can you carry the Tassajara zendo in the palm of your hand. Actually, you know, you carry the Tassajara Zendo, it fits right in your head. I've got a big head, yes.

[33:36]

How big is your head? I mean, you know, we've got some, like all the traffic on Irving Park Road is in mind. But I wanted to acknowledge the fact that we are actually transcending time and space right now by virtue of this little, sharp little box on the floor that is recording this talk. And so that there are, beings who are listening to this talk right now, who are in the future, in some different place, but here they are, right here with us. And I just wanted to say hello to them. Hi there. Hello, skin bags. Yeah. Oh, one of them said hi. Hey, hey. I hope the planet is still capable of sustaining your life form. Yes, yes.

[34:28]

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